By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Director: Ava DuVernay
Country: united_states
Year: 2016
Running time: 100
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5895028/reference
Kate says: “The facts delivered in the first few moments of the documentary are painful to accept — informing the audience that the US is home to 5% of the population of the globe, and American prisons hold 25% of the total number of incarcerated persons worldwide. The focus of the film is juxtaposition of the first 250 years of slavery in the American Colonies and the early history of the United States, against the intent and repercussions of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. For each step taken to distance ourselves from the sin of slavery, our customs and subsequently manufactured laws were complicit in reforging and reinforcing those chains through arrest and imprisonment of black men and women in ever-increasing numbers. Through interviews of political figures, activists, historians, and former inmates of these wretched institutions, Ava DuVernay brings our nation’s historic and on-going failures of legal rights and justice to light.”